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Kek-W
BLUE RASPBERRIES
Nemonmous Seven (Zencore!)
**How am I getting on?**
I first read and enjoyed D F Lewis' stories during an initial Small Press incursion in the early 90's. But somehow along the way I ended up writing comic scripts instead of short stories and eventually I drifted into music journalism by default. However, Des' unique and defiantly off-kilter voice stayed with me down through the years.
About 12 months ago I made a conscious decision to start writing prose fiction again after a long break - frankly, I was desperate to write fiction again; it's almost like it’s some sort of hard-wired imperative - but I was also curious to see how my own voice might have developed, if at all, in the intervening years. Getting a story accepted in an anthology edited by Des was such an amazing morale and confidence-booster for me, especially as the submission process was completely anonymous and I knew how high the standard of submissions would have been.
Getting any work accepted is always a buzz, but the Nemo process was such tremendous fun - I loved the playfulness, the guessing-games and the whole Cloak and Dagger aspect; the sense that rules were being broken and new ways of doing things were being mapped out. There was a quiet, understated feeling of transgression about the proceedings, a gentle derailment of expectation for both the readers and the author.
And the fact that someone like Jetse de Vries then actually took the time to deconstruct my story, and tease out various subtexts and layers of meanings was fabulous. To be honest, it's every writer's wet-dream.
I can say, hand on heart, that Nemo 7: Zencore has been one of the most pleasurable writing experiences I've been involved in.
**What difference Nemo made**
Appearing in Nemo 7 hasn't really affected my writing ‘career,’ such as it is, but it's given me the increased confidence to follow my own gut-instincts. Fifteen years ago, my own writing voice annoyed me because it seemed erratic and ill-focused...it still is, but now, in 2007, I’ve come to realise that it was erratic and ill-focused because I had 3 or 4 different voices all vying for attention like a bad case of literary MPD. In the last year or so I've learnt to untangle and filter those different impulses (Suburban Magic Realism, Neo-Surrealism, Bizarro Sci-Fi, etc) into something more coherent and Nemo was part of that process. In fact, it seems to me to be the perfect platform for folks whose voices don’t quite fit.
And the idea that Nemo in its various incarnations might be part of some as-yet unnamed post-New Worlds formation of contemporary weird speculative fiction is kinda thrilling. It was also great to recognise a few other names and voices from that early 90s era and realize that time hasn’t silenced them either, and that they’re still out there, pecking away at the margins.
Nemonmous Seven (Zencore!)
**How am I getting on?**
I first read and enjoyed D F Lewis' stories during an initial Small Press incursion in the early 90's. But somehow along the way I ended up writing comic scripts instead of short stories and eventually I drifted into music journalism by default. However, Des' unique and defiantly off-kilter voice stayed with me down through the years.
About 12 months ago I made a conscious decision to start writing prose fiction again after a long break - frankly, I was desperate to write fiction again; it's almost like it’s some sort of hard-wired imperative - but I was also curious to see how my own voice might have developed, if at all, in the intervening years. Getting a story accepted in an anthology edited by Des was such an amazing morale and confidence-booster for me, especially as the submission process was completely anonymous and I knew how high the standard of submissions would have been.
Getting any work accepted is always a buzz, but the Nemo process was such tremendous fun - I loved the playfulness, the guessing-games and the whole Cloak and Dagger aspect; the sense that rules were being broken and new ways of doing things were being mapped out. There was a quiet, understated feeling of transgression about the proceedings, a gentle derailment of expectation for both the readers and the author.
And the fact that someone like Jetse de Vries then actually took the time to deconstruct my story, and tease out various subtexts and layers of meanings was fabulous. To be honest, it's every writer's wet-dream.
I can say, hand on heart, that Nemo 7: Zencore has been one of the most pleasurable writing experiences I've been involved in.
**What difference Nemo made**
Appearing in Nemo 7 hasn't really affected my writing ‘career,’ such as it is, but it's given me the increased confidence to follow my own gut-instincts. Fifteen years ago, my own writing voice annoyed me because it seemed erratic and ill-focused...it still is, but now, in 2007, I’ve come to realise that it was erratic and ill-focused because I had 3 or 4 different voices all vying for attention like a bad case of literary MPD. In the last year or so I've learnt to untangle and filter those different impulses (Suburban Magic Realism, Neo-Surrealism, Bizarro Sci-Fi, etc) into something more coherent and Nemo was part of that process. In fact, it seems to me to be the perfect platform for folks whose voices don’t quite fit.
And the idea that Nemo in its various incarnations might be part of some as-yet unnamed post-New Worlds formation of contemporary weird speculative fiction is kinda thrilling. It was also great to recognise a few other names and voices from that early 90s era and realize that time hasn’t silenced them either, and that they’re still out there, pecking away at the margins.